AU urged to preserve African languages

Written by Biola Azeez, IlorinTuesday, September 6, 2011African Union(AU) has beencalled upon to take pragmatic steps towards preserving African languages.

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Director-General, Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Professor Wole Ogundele, made the call in Ilorin on Monday

The don warned that unless this was done most of African languages especially Yoruba may go into extinction in the next 50 years.

He lamented that it was an irony that a London-based centre was spending huge amount of money on the study and preservation on some African languages while the AU was folding its arms.

The professor of English and cultural practices, who was speaking in Ilorin, at the media launch of Black Culture and Arts Foundation (BCAAF), also advanced reasons why efforts to commercialise culture in Nigeria had failed.

He listed infrastructural and social problems as some of the factors responsible for the failure of such commercialisation.

He noted that "our efforts to commercialise culture in Nigeria have failed because of infrastructural decay such as bad roads and the state of 'uncleanliness' of our hotels."

He further said that "the Europeans who know that there is insecurity and infrastructural decay in the country would not come to invest in Nigeria's arts and culture."